The Many Faces of PaaS

By now, enterprises understand the value of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), but there still is much confusion about Platform as a Service (PaaS). This confusion is one reason why enterprises have been slow to adopt PaaS. Why is there so much confusion? This presentation will help clear up the confusion of all the different types of PaaS offerings in the marketplace.

Watch this EMC Tech Talk for a live discussion about how you can automate provisioning of the underlying physical infrastructure on VCE Vblock Systems with ViPR Controller. Delays in rolling out a new business service can negatively impact your ability to generate new revenue.

Integrate with VMware plug-ins and packs to create your own “as-a-service” offering. Easily and quickly respond to dynamic business needs with infrastructure lifecycle management.

Flash storage has the power to transform the way we do business, enabling organizations to accelerate IT, deliver a richer user experience, and gain real-time insights into their operations. But until now flash storage solutions have forced you to compromise on price, performance, or features. Some are super fast, but that speed comes with a steep price tag. Others are economical, but they lack enterprise-grade capabilities.

Join Chris Tsilipounidakis as he discusses the latest advancements in flash technology and how Tegile is disrupting the industry by engineering intelligent flash arrays that deliver high performance and enterprise capabilities at one-third the cost traditional arrays. Learn how you can accelerate your business, maximize uptime, and achieve IT efficiencies with Tegile flash storage.

The first installment of our performance benchmarking Webcast series, “Storage Performance Benchmarking: Introduction and Fundamentals” aims to bring anyone untrained in the storage performance arts to a common base with the experts. In this first webcast, gain an understanding of the complexities of benchmarking modern storage arrays and learn the terminology foundations necessary for the rest of the series. This includes:
•The different kinds of performance benchmarking engagements
•Metrics: why the “right” metrics matter, and an introduction to the variety of metrics that may be relevant to your business
•Terminology basics: iops, op/s, throughput, bandwidth, latency/response time

The first installment of our performance benchmarking Webcast series, “Storage Performance Benchmarking: Introduction and Fundamentals” aims to bring anyone untrained in the storage performance arts to a common base with the experts. In this first webcast, gain an understanding of the complexities of benchmarking modern storage arrays and learn the terminology foundations necessary for the rest of the series. This includes:
•The different kinds of performance benchmarking engagements
•Metrics: why the “right” metrics matter, and an introduction to the variety of metrics that may be relevant to your business
•Terminology basics: iops, op/s, throughput, bandwidth, latency/response time

The first installment of our performance benchmarking Webcast series, “Storage Performance Benchmarking: Introduction and Fundamentals” aims to bring anyone untrained in the storage performance arts to a common base with the experts. In this first webcast, gain an understanding of the complexities of benchmarking modern storage arrays and learn the terminology foundations necessary for the rest of the series. This includes:
•The different kinds of performance benchmarking engagements
•Metrics: why the “right” metrics matter, and an introduction to the variety of metrics that may be relevant to your business
•Terminology basics: iops, op/s, throughput, bandwidth, latency/response time

In this webcast, we will go over Qualys hardware and virtual scanner appliances for internal and external vulnerability scans. We will then demonstrate how you can discover various assets in your network, prioritize them, execute vulnerability scans, and generate reports that would suit your needs.

See how HP ALM software was deployed to support Agile development and test efforts in a private secure cloud environment for government agencies. Learn about their need and our resulting solution. Find out how HP ALM software is provisioned in a virtual data center cloud development and test environment. See how our on-demand offering, with flexible pricing, allows agencies to leverage their investment in HP Software, greatly increasing ROI and reducing risk.

The worldwide adoption of cloud technology includes business communications. This video is a compilation of sessions exploring vital transition topics including: why cloud is the right solution for a growing business; the cost analysis of old technologies versus the cloud; how cloud communications works at uniting multiple office locations; and ways to make a smooth transition to a cloud phone solution.

Data preparation is occasionally referred to as data plumbing, suggesting that it is dirty grunge work that is an unglamorous necessity. We will see how this point of view misses entirely the discovery potential, value, and “thrill of the chase” that data preparation can offer. Data prep includes the all important first step in any analytics project: “Know Thy Data” (which is one of the fundamental principles of data science). We discuss data profiling, data transformations and normalization, feature selection and engineering, and more data prep approaches that empower you to begin learning from your data right out of the “starting gate” on your analytics project. Learning from Data (i.e., data science) doesn’t begin after data prep, but right from the start.

The move from on-premises to the Cloud is a transition Microsoft itself undertook. Hear from Seth Malcolm, a Microsoft Senior IT Program Manager, about the process and the business impact. He also shares lessons learned and provide important recommendations for IT professionals.

To examine the real-world cost of cloud over time, 451 Research’s Cloud Price Index has been tracking the price of cloud since 2014. Like a consumer price index, our CPI is made up of a basket of goods, but in our case, it is a specification of the services required to operate a typical Web server application. The index shows a complicated and ever changing market where value, performance and even just price are difficult to measure. Being aware of the differences between options is the first step to gaining best value, using tools to compare them can ensure ongoing suitability.

DevOps is a key ingredient for success to meet the rapid fire changes of the Digital Revolution. Despite that fact - many projects start out with the right intentions but quickly fizzle and fade because of common implementation mistakes that impact the Business and IT alike. Join Guest Speakers - Andi Mann (formerly of CA/EMA) and Brian Elkins (VP Technology) along with host Jeanne Morain - for tips, tricks and strategies for avoiding or recovering from common DevOps implementation mistakes.

Leaping to Software Defined Storage? Make Sure You Can Answer These Questions:

1. Is Software Defined Storage Right For You?
2. What are the Hardware Requirements For Software Defined Storage?
3. How do you Transition To Software Defined Storage?

Join George Crump, Lead Analyst at Storage Switzerland and Gavin Mclaughlin, VP of Strategy and Communication with X-IO for this instructive webinar. In this webinar, you will learn the answers to the three key questions, you should ask when considering a software-defined storage strategy.

All Attendees to this webinar will receive an advanced copy of Storage Switzerland's Latest White Paper, "The Hardware Requirements of Software Defined Storage".

Decades of experience in fighting cybercrimes has greatly informed how Microsoft develops products. Michael Quinn (General Manager, Cybersecurity & Data Protection, Microsoft) discusses the features, policies, and practices that make the Microsoft Cloud so secure and set it apart from other options on the market.

The first installment of our performance benchmarking Webcast series, “Storage Performance Benchmarking: Introduction and Fundamentals” aims to bring anyone untrained in the storage performance arts to a common base with the experts. In this first webcast, gain an understanding of the complexities of benchmarking modern storage arrays and learn the terminology foundations necessary for the rest of the series. This includes:
•The different kinds of performance benchmarking engagements
•Metrics: why the “right” metrics matter, and an introduction to the variety of metrics that may be relevant to your business
•Terminology basics: iops, op/s, throughput, bandwidth, latency/response time

Enterprises around the world have embraced OpenStack as their cloud management platform because of its ability to simply and effectively manage shared infrastructure. To quickly realize OpenStack's benefits, rapid deployment of a production cloud that delivers mixed workload capabilities on a solid and dependable foundation is critical.

Join this webinar to learn how agile infrastructure for OpenStack enables you to quickly stand up a dynamic self-service cloud infrastructure so you can easily take advantage of the flexibility, scalability, and efficiency of OpenStack.

Attendees will leave with a better understanding of how Agile Infrastructure:

- Extends the core values of cloud: scale, guaranteed performance, automation, high availability and efficiency
- Ensures you deploy OpenStack using a process that's repeatable and error free
- Allows you to run production and test/dev workloads on one storage platform
- Provides higher utilization, better performance and more operational efficiency than legacy solutions

Realistic planning assumptions are an important element in a business continuity program. Why? They enable the planning team to identify the parameters they’re expecting to encounter following a disaster. They aren’t “pie-in-the-sky” wish lists but rather they’re the planner’s best guess about the conditions that will exist. Smart assumptions are usually unfavorable conditions, such as the lack of electric power or the unavailability of key people. Not-so-smart planning assumptions rely on best-case conditions that are probably not realistic.

OpenShift Commons Briefings allow you to have access to trainings you might have missed on DevOps, operations and application development. Join this presentation to learn how to use OpenShift on OpenStack to deploy apps at rocket speed.

The next disaster is right around the corner. Whether in the form of a hurricane, flood, tornado, or over-eager cable cutter, events outside your control can impact your business. Planning ahead now will minimize any negative effects and keep your business protected. Join this session to hear practical advice to keep your business running when disaster strikes.

The new Microsoft Windows 10 platform is an exciting step forward from both a functionality and a security perspective. Senior Product Marketing Manager, Stephen Rose covers the new features of this operating system and what they mean to you as a way of adding additional security to your organization.

Business Continuity! Disaster Recovery! We’ve all heard these terms, often used interchangeably. It seems there are more and more so-called “experts” out there… and more and more ‘noise’. This critical topic does not have to be complicated or confusing. Come share the perspectives of a pragmatic global thought leader who’s not just talked about it but who’s owned a global program, and whose plans have been proven in actual events. There is value for the experienced practitioner as well as the non-expert executive or manager who has to understand the concepts in plain English. Concepts covered include:

•How Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Crisis Management and related topics are all part of holistic Business Resiliency – the ability of an organization to withstand stress from impact – and how they are interrelated
•A brief history lesson of where it’s been and where it’s going, to chart the trajectory from the current path
•What it is, and more importantly, what it is not, for example it’s not ‘Insurance’ and it’s not ‘The Big “Code Red” Binder’ (in fact, it’s not a binder at all!)
•How to understand and communicate the value in business terms not ‘scary-speak’
•The essential parts of a comprehensive program and what “Good” looks like for all of them
•Some best practices that even experienced planners sometimes ignore
•What does the future look like?

Continuity planning is simply the good business practice of ensuring the execution of essential functions through all circumstances, and it is a fundamental responsibility of public institutions and private entities responsible to their stakeholders. Continuity planning should not be a separate and compartmentalized function performed by independent cells of a few planners in each organization. Organizations must fully integrate continuity into all aspects of an organization’s daily operations, thus creating a “culture of continuity.”

The COOP presentation will:

1. Provide an understanding of Continuity Planning and Risk Management,
2. Explain the importance of a viable Continuity capability,
3. Emphasize the need for a viable Continuity capability in all organizations that enable organizations to continue their essential functions across a broad spectrum of emergencies.

In addition to providing an overview of Continuity of Operations, the COOP presentation will also:

 Educate Federal, State, territorial, tribal, local government jurisdictions, private sector organizations, and emergency management practitioners on the importance of integrating Continuity into daily operations, functions, plans, and mission areas.
 Emphasize the Federal Government’s Policy requiring Federal agencies to be prepared for unpredictable threats such as earthquakes, accidents, sabotage, and terrorism.
 Discuss the importance for State, territorial, tribal, local government jurisdictions, private sector organizations to be prepared for unpredictable disruption of business operations.
 Provide States, territories, tribes, local government jurisdictions, private sector organizations, and businesses with assistance, guidance, knowledge, networking, resources, and tools needed to succeed.

Join us and business continuity expert, Jon Toigo for a practical discussion on effectively leveraging cloud services for your data protection and backup strategies. Toigo, the prolific author of thousands of articles and 17 tech-related books, emphasizes local storage of critical data combined with a low cost, off-site storage option that includes cloud storage.

You’ll also see ways to easily connect your data protection efforts to leading cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services’ Storage Gateway and low-cost S3 services.

Hyperconverged technology is a term used to describe what some
vendors are calling 'infrastructure in a box' or 'all-in-one solution.' Virtualization and storage
administrators understand that it can make sense to couple virtualized
storage with a virtualized server instance in some cases to create a
virtualized infrastructure.
However, there are several issues to consider before plunging into a hyperconverged deployment.

This session will discuss the applications benefiting from a hyper converged solution and how it fits into your data center.

There are many variations and offering of Hyper-Converged systems as more vendors seek to capitalize on successes. This presentation will discuss differentiating elements for Hyper-Converged systems and review the different offerings covered in Evaluator Series Research.

Attendees of this presentation will take away a comprehensive understanding of products on the market and decision criteria to consider when making a purchase.

Understanding your true Cloud Costs can often be like trying to solve a Sudoku Puzzle: full of mystery, unknown numbers and challenges. Many Enterprise and Vendors a like often face sticker shock when their cloud usage or implementation does not match the budget.

Join Jeanne Morain and her special guests Michael Mattal, Avnet AWS Practice Specialist and Chris Armstrong - Principle Solutions Architect for Teknow Consulting to gain insights and tips on understanding the Hidden Cost Challenges along with best practices and tools to avoid them. During this action packed 30 minute session we will cover:

- List of Hidden Costs of Cloud to include in your calculations
- Tips and Tricks on calculating cloud costs and determining workload fit
- Tools that can help you build a solid business case for Cloud

The IT Specialist Network is a global community of 400,000+ IT professionals dedicated to the field of information technology. As Certified IT Specialists, its members evaluate or review IT products and services from all sectors of the industry. It also advises IT buyers or decision makers via its online IT Specialist Advisory Services.